


The Hogwarts Express

by Yatorihell



Series: In The Darkness [23]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, ノラガミ | Noragami
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 04:36:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12833415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yatorihell/pseuds/Yatorihell
Summary: Third arc of the Harry Potter AU!Another summer has passed, and a new threat presents itself.Thank you Gio (the_musical_alchemist) for beta-ing me <3Happy birthday Kayla (Pahndah)!





	The Hogwarts Express

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smolgreenpaladin (smolgreennerd)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolgreennerd/gifts).



Yato groaned. The rattle of a passing train threatened yet again to bring down the roof above his head, waking him from an otherwise peaceful sleep. The world peeked back at him through the slit in his fringe where he squinted at the curtain-less window, much too bright and too grey for him to want to wake up.

The Leaky Cauldron wasn’t the finest place to live, but it was the cheapest.

He had a modest room – the best he could get at such a low price – which became more of an owl cage to Yato as he whittled the summer away.

Yato kicked his legs out in the tangle of bedsheets he had created, frowning at where the canopy of his bed should be, instead seeing the same bland ceiling that greeted him every day. He wasn’t sure just what had happened to the fabric that was meant to give him some kind of privacy, but something told him it had been stolen a long time ago, possibly to make clothes for whichever poor hermit had stayed in his room before.

Aside from a lack of veil, the bed was similar to the one he had grown accustomed to at Hogwarts: four-poster but instead it was an ebony oak, meticulously carved with patterns too hard to distinguish. Its age showed when Yato pushed himself up, the alarming creak of wooden slats and the dangerous wobble of rickety wood a sign of the countless visitors who had stayed in the very same bed over the last millennia.

A cloying, lingering smell of age and dirt had saturated into his clothes. Sometimes he was sure it had permeated itself into his skin when he scrubbed his dirty fingernails under the sputtering taps in the shared washroom that stopped giving hot water long ago.

The enclosed charcoal fireplace on the far side of the room had blackened the floor, scuff marks of boots visible from where the cleaning lady had attempted to sweep some muck away. Plumes of sooty smoke had stained the once white walls, laying a fine layer of dirt to every surface and giving the room a shabby chic-less aura.

Yato shuffled to the window and swiped the thin lattice glass pane lazily, grime dirtying his hand which he wiped on his bed trousers without a second thought. It made no difference – the years of dirt from the old-fashioned wizard side of London had marred the outside of the glass, all but obscuring a less than appealing view of tin-patched roofs and dingy alleys where the most shadowy character would not dare go.

Yato let out another longer groan, stretching an arm over his head before dropping it to ruffle his hair into some sort of acceptable mop. He dressed lightly, shoes creaking on the floor with the door slamming shut behind him as he jogged down the wonky staircase and slipped through the small entrance of the Leaky Cauldron.

Wandering was his only hobby that he could say he was happy to do if it meant he could escape the small room he had, and it wasn’t a completely terrible thing if he was confined to Diagon Alley.

Yato ambled, not paying attention to what the common street merchants were trying to sell him. The same rustic cauldrons lined the outside of multiple shops, spilling in heaps on bronze and silver alongside lopsided scales that had been handed down through generations of witches and wizards.

He’d seen new animals being delivered to the Magical Menagerie, cats and toads alike ready to be bought by eager first years when they descended for school supplies. He had also loitered for far too long outside of the Quality Quidditch Supplies when Spudmore’s brand new broomstick – the Firebolt – graced its display window.

Yato wondered if he would bump into Yukine, or Hiyori, but every day proved fruitless and a gnawing feeling started in his stomach when August came with no sign of either of them. A brief thought of contacting them crossed his mind before he realised that one, he had no addresses for them and two, he had no clue how to send a muggle letter. They were probably using their little pocket things to send notes all summer.

Yato’s pace slowed as he reached a shadowy pathway, one that wouldn’t be noticed by the innocent shopper unless they knew where to look. The murkiness of the street against the liveliness of Diagon Alley was unreal, like stepping across the fine line from a dream to a nightmare.

The shadowy depths of Knockturn Alley – a most dubious place you wouldn’t want to be seen in even if you had nothing to hide – concealed the most questionable artefacts, and even more questionable people. Phantom-like witches and wizards hugged the shadows, their dark robes questionable as to who their allegiance lay with, or the manner of magic they practiced.

Yato’s assessment of the alley ceased abruptly.

He squinted.

There, just around the corner, he could see something out of the ordinary – a rarity in such places as this. Eyes, yellow and venomous, stared back at him. Though they were much lower than a person’s height, he could tell that the thing watching him was no human, neither elf nor goblin.

Yato scrunched his eyes more. He could feel his head aching from the contrast of lightning as he took a half-step into the overcast before he caught himself and stopped.

The look he had seen was primal, animalistic, but when he snapped back to his senses, they had already vanished.

 

~

 

Hiyori and Yukine stared at Yato in amazement.

It was September 1st. It was 10:45AM. Yato grinned at them, steadying a cage on top of his trolley.

There was a pigeon in the cage.

“What. The _hell_. Is that?” Yukine said slowly. The beady red eye of the pigeon glared back at him, head twitching in curiosity as the new sounds of Kings Cross Station filled its ears.

“I didn't have one of your cool little thingies!” Yato replied, voice a high whine the way a child would complain if they didn’t receive what they wanted for Christmas.

Hiyori could only guess he meant a mobile phone as he had seen her give Yukine her old one, but she didn't think Yato would have been as jealous as to buy a _carrier pigeon._

“If you wanted a ‘cool phone’ you could’ve said,” Hiyori sighed in exasperation.

“Cool phone?” Yato echoed. “Well, I’ve got a ‘coo’ phone!”

He looked so proud at his joke that Hiyori didn't have the heart to shoot him down. Yukine, on the other hand, was ready and waiting.

“It’s vermin. Let it go.”

“But I wanted to talk to you guys!”

Yukine cocked an eyebrow. “I didn’t get anything.”

Yato suddenly lost his words. One small detail – one that would be huge to them – had escaped his mind and was the reason why he hadn’t sent any sort of letter.  

“Yeah….” Yato drew out the word, hoping that what he was about to say wouldn’t be as stupid as he thought it was. “I need your addresses.”

Yukine rolled his eyes and turned on the spot, muttering about how it was a miracle that Yato had been accepted into Hogwarts at all. Hiyori gave Yato a faint bemused smile before following after Yukine, who had already began boarding the Hogwarts Express – though he was still was short enough to lose sight of, he was taller than the first and second years that preceded them.

Yato hurriedly pushed his trolley towards the luggage cart where the stewards were loading bundles of cases and stashing owl cages into a private, quiet carriage. He ignored the strange looks he got from a young girl and her mother upon spotting his odd selection of bird, ducking out of the way and bounding onto the train behind Hiyori.

As usual the train was in a riot of students and all sorts of magic that could easily blind them if they didn’t keep their wits about them. Silver firecrackers and ebony fizz bombs exploded with noisy pops that left their ears ringing by the time they had stumbled through the smoke, searching for vacant cabins only to find all were occupied by at least one person.

Not fancying another death-defying trip through the train, Hiyori pointed at the last door of the carriage where they would be best off staying for the remainder of the journey.

The cabin had a musky smell, probably from its sole occupant who didn’t rise nor turn in their direction when Yukine slid the door open. The trio exchanged glances before shrugging, stepping into the cabin and gently shutting the door as to not wake the stranger.

Yato took a seat on the far side of the compartment next to the door. Yukine sat by the window opposite the stranger, leaving Hiyori to sit by his side.

“Definitely not a student,” Yato remarked, eyeing the stranger suspiciously.

His face was concealed by the tented peak of a coat – probably older than all of them combined – which had been haphazardly draped over his frame which rose and fell steadily with deep breaths. Sleeping.

A battered case similar to his own had been stashed in the rack above their heads, a name tag yellowed with age dangled between the railings. Before any of them could decipher the name the jolted and swung as the Hogwarts Express juddered to life.

Yato relaxed in his seat after a few moments, observing the stranger who didn’t stir as they were slowly taken out of London before the ancient train gather speed, hurtling them towards another year at Hogwarts.

Hiyori initiated the conversation, asking Yato what he had done over the summer to which he gave some vague reply of _‘this and that’_ before turning the question back on her and Yukine.

Chattering about things like ‘ _theme_ parks’ and ‘ _cinemas_ ’ that he didn’t understand, Yato nodded like he had the faintest idea what Hiyori was talking about. Yukine seemed to already know all of this – of course, he did have a phone to talk to Hiyori about this – as he didn’t really take part in the conversation. His summer probably involved sleeping. A _lot_ of sleeping.

“I didn’t see you around this year,” Hiyori recalled the time she had bumped into Yato the previous summer. “I thought I would’ve bumped into you the amount of times I went to get school stuff.”

Yato twanged in disappointment. Why didn’t he see her if she was there so often? Still, she had no idea that his he knew full well he was _in_ Diagon Alley the whole time.

“Well, you know, I was at home…” Yato said. It wasn’t a lie exactly as the Leaky Cauldron _was_ his home, but Hiyori nor Yukine had to know that.

“I went to Diagon Alley a few times.” _Lie_. “But I had to go to other places.” _Lie_. “Like Knockturn Alley.”

“What the hell were you doing there?!” Yukine exclaimed.

_Shit._

Yato’s loss for words and Yukine’s aghast face told Hiyori that wherever that was, it was not a place for a teenager – or anybody – to be. Curiosity got the better of her when she saw Yato’s guilty face.

“What’s in Knockturn Alley? Hiyori asked.

Yato avoided her inquisitive eyes, but Yukine was the one who answered her with a hissed whisper in case anyone outside, or the stranger, was eavesdropping.

“Bad stuff, bad wizards, full of nutjobs.”

At this statement and their paired looks of perplexity, Yato’s gaze shifted to the window. He should’ve kept quiet.

Of course, Knockturn Alley had a bad reputation and it was incredibly suspicious for anyone to go there. Tongues would wag, and whispers would spread over involvement in dark magic and shifty connections to an even darker underground of demented wizards.

They’d think he was crazy if he told them the real reason he was there. Who goes looking for a pair of eyes that may or may not have been watching and following them? The amount of times Yato had glanced behind in the past few months when he felt a presence was enough to make him paranoid.

“There’s a lot of old stuff in there,” Yato said carelessly as if the topic had been blown out of proportion. “I just had a look.”

“I’d rather if you didn’t,” Yukine grumbled. “It was bad enough last year with everyone thinking you were a nutjob trying to kill muggleborns. This would be the icing on the cake if anyone found out.”

A wry smile played on Yato’s lips. “Aww, you do care.”

“Shut up.”

A lack of entertainment left the trio to chat and doze and daydream for the most part of the journey. They hesitated over whether or not to wake the stranger when the dear old trolley witch stopped by, deciding instead to raid the sweets (no chocolate frogs, out of consideration for Hiyori) and a few piping hot pumpkin pies that cooled almost immediately.

The weather had turned drastically after dusk had settled. Instead of blue skies over rolling hills and azure loughs were thunderous storm clouds that blackened the world around them.

The small lights of the cabins crawled through the gloom, the near-invisible snake of train carriages blindly taking its occupants to their destination and giving no hint of where they were or when they would arrive.

Rain lashed against the window in powerful waves, running in too many rivulets to count and battering the roof with deafening racket.

Yato leaned in the corner of the bench, arms folded. He listlessly staring out at the storm, wondering when they would arrive at Hogwarts. Yukine studied a book, scribbling notes with some sort of quill he had brought from home which did not need ink whilst Hiyori pointed out sentences and muttered quiet hints.

They were quickly cut off as the train lurched and the locomotive’s wheels screeched painfully on the tracks, throwing them all off balance and nearly tumbling to the floor alongside Yukine’s fallen book.

Yukine swore under his breath, rubbing his head where it had clashed against the window before reaching down to pick up his book. Right as his fingers closed on its spine, the lights flickered, blinked, and died.

“Bloody perfect,” Yukine muttered. He dropped the book on the short table in front of him. Lucky for some, the train’s sudden halt had not woken the stranger at all. “What happened?”

Hiyori shrugged, head turning to Yato who gave her an equally clueless look.

The train juddered again, cutting off Yato’s attempt to stand up and go outside, and making the windows rattle with a huge force. It was Yato’s turn to cuss before a hissed whisper made the cabin fall deathly silent.

“Look!”

Yukine’s reflection, bewildered in the window of the train, was vanishing. Not because the lights had returned, but because of a frost that glazed the pane with a soft crackling noise. Frozen fractals forming underneath Yukine’s hand which he had pressed up to meet the phenomena.

“Something’s out there,” he said in a hushed voice. His eyes trained on the darkness outside, straining to be able to see something beyond the sudden wintery occurrence.

The storm outside had stopped, almost suspended in time, giving an eerie silence to the entire train as students wondered alike if they had merely broken down, or if something larger was at work. They were in the eye of the hurricane, and the storm was about to hit.

Cold more intense than any winter he had known chilled the cabin immediately, leaking into the very cracks of his being where he thought it would be impossible to feel such a cutting frost. Their breaths clouded in puffs of white that formed and dissipated in the air with every short breath they took. Looking from one to another, Yato could see the matched quaking fear visible in Hiyori’s and Yukine’s wide eyes.

Nothing felt like this – nothing this unfeeling or sinister. Except for…

A movement outside the cabin caught his attention. Not at the window where Yukine peered out, but from the carriage hallway where, instinctively, they all turned to look.

A shadowed hand with bone-thin, elongated fingers stretched out against the frosted glass window, beckoning the door handle which opened with a frigid click.

It moved slowly, or maybe that was the feeling of suspended time that the trio could feel as their breath hitched. Their hearts pounded the blood in their ears so impossibly loud that they almost couldn’t hear the slow scrape of the cabin door sliding open. A tall figure blocked any escape, enshrouded in something that resembled cloth floating underwater; enchanting, free, but simultaneously terrifying, oppressive. Inhuman.

It inhaled a rattling breath as it straightened its skinny shoulders, the cusp of the thin black robes draped over its head revealing a wrinkled mouth similar to one of a rotting corpse. Its breaths deepened and as if smelling him, its head reared and its lips – if it had any – pulled back, leaving a black pit to greet Yato as he stared the harbinger death in the face.

A dementor.

Yato’s stomach knotted, the pit feeling in his stomach falling away and making him feel like he was going to hurl if terror would allow his body to move. The blood rushed from his ears to his head, but still he could hear nothing but the crazed electric pump of his heart slamming against his ribcage and the heavy breaths of the dementor which drew in more than air.

_It’s happening again._

It was familiar. Not in the sense of nostalgic memories, but as the familiar feeling of the cusp of death – where the dementor was allowed to draw its victims life-force for just a tad longer than it was bearable before it was stopped, placated until it could serve its use again.

His body went limp when its inhales grew longer and deeper, his body twitching with every stolen breath. It was enough to make Yato’s chest explode with the desperation for air.

_I can’t breathe._

_I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t –_

The last thing he saw was a quick black shadow by his side, immediately replaced by a light so bright, so serene, that he thought this time the Dementor had fulfilled its task.

His eyes rolled white, and his mind was set adrift in a blanketed abyss.

 

~

 

Yato jerked back to life -- or was this the afterlife? If it weren’t for the familiar ceiling of the Hogwarts Express – which had been illuminated by the now-functional lights – and his swimming sight of the cabin accompanied by the rhythmic clacks of the steam engine, he would’ve thought he was there.

A cold sweat drenched his body that left him shivering as his eyes stared up at the ceiling for a moment. Blinking, he tuned back into the world.

Yato’s head throbbed as he pushed himself up, a hand steadying him when he winced and pressed his palm to his temple.

“Easy there.”

That wasn’t Hiyori. It wasn’t Yukine. It wasn’t even Kazuma. The voice, gruff and deep, but in what sounded like a gentler tone of voice, spoke again.

“Eat this.”

The hand left his shoulder. With some shuffling of the person standing and rummaging through for something the other side of the cabin. A hard object fell into Yato’s lap a moment later, catching him completely off-guard.

His head swam, but the fog was clearing enough for him to gain his bearings. The first thing he noticed was that he was on the floor – he must’ve slipped right out of his own seat when he passed out. Yukine and Hiyori were still perched on the cushioned bench looking shaken, but nowhere near as bad as Yato when he saw the scared, searching looks they gave him.

His eyes slid away from theirs, ashamed that they had seen him in such a state. His eyes flickered to the figure standing over them.

He didn’t need to stretch to reach the shelf that hung above the seats; it was more of a challenge for him not to bump his head on them.

Brown eyes under a furrowed brow glanced down at Yato when he felt his eyes on him, mouth twisted into a thin line as he shoved the case back in its holding. A scruff of dark stubble sparingly patched his chin, giving way to short sideburns that grew into longer, thicker locks that had been slicked back from his face.

“Eat.”

Yato dazedly looked back down when the man pointed at the thing he’d dropped in Yato’s lap. Wrapped in paper and silver foil, a darkly sweet-smelling aroma filled his nostrils – chocolate.

Not comprehending the stranger’s kindness – or why exactly he had to eat it – Yato looked back at him for answers, but his heavy footsteps were already fading down the corridor as the cabin door glided shut with a dull thump.

The trio remained silent.

“Who’s that?” Yato asked stupidly after a long pause.

“He didn’t say,” Hiyori said quietly. Her eyes stayed trained on Yato’s as he grasped the seat and hauled himself back up, “What was that thing?”

“… It was a Dementor.”

“What the hell is a Dementor doing out here?!” Yukine burst out, catching them by surprise.

Hiyori looked between the two, a sense of dread overtaking her when she carefully asked:

“What’s a Dementor?”

“Dark creatures,” Yukine said, uneasiness evident in his voice when he cast a side long look at Yato when he continued, “they feed on happiness and consume a person’s soul.”

Hiyori looked like she was about to be ill, a shaking hand covering her mouth.

“Question is,” Yukine said, unsuccessfully trying to take her mind off it, “what’s it doing it here?”

Yato shrugged nonchalantly, feigning a carelessness at the ordeal. He didn’t exactly feel like discussing it, not when he still felt like there was part of him missing. One question nagged him:

“Why did it stop?”

“That man, he used a spell to make it leave,” Hiyori said. “I don’t know what it was…”

She looked to Yukine for help, but he shook his head, equally as clueless as Hiyori and Yato who gave a small frown.

“What did it look like?” Yato asked.

It was Yukine’s turn to look at Hiyori, slowly trying to find the right words which made no sense.

“It was like light, and water, but it was… shiny…” he said vaguely, moving his hands the way the spell moved.

Yato’s small, exasperated sigh quietened the carriage again. His head had dropped again. The uneaten chocolate still sat in his clammy hand, and hadn’t gone unnoticed by Hiyori who kept a worried eye on him.

“You have to eat,” she said gently.

Yato nodded quietly. He snapped the bar in its wrapper before opening it, throwing pieces to both Yukine and Hiyori. He gave them a wry smile that didn’t reach his eyes as he stared at his reflection in the window. The ice had all but melted under the harsh pelting of raindrops of the resumed storm.

It had completely escaped his attention that the sleeping stranger was now gone, and that the man pacing down the hallway had just saved his life.

**Author's Note:**

> Can you guess who's joined the AU? :3


End file.
